


we who have wandered down

by theprokaryotekid



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Apocalypse, M/M, Telepathy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-11
Updated: 2013-09-11
Packaged: 2017-12-26 08:19:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 661
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/963702
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theprokaryotekid/pseuds/theprokaryotekid
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sophonias 1:15 That day is a day of wrath, a day of tribulation and distress, a day of calamity and misery, a day of darkness and obscurity, a day of clouds and whirlwinds.</p>
            </blockquote>





	we who have wandered down

The world wasn’t meant to end like this.

They both knew it, could feel time spooling outwards, writing _what if? what if? what if?_ on the universe where there used to be a _yes_. But the Master had always been adept at achieving the impossible; why the Doctor was surprised that he'd managed this, he wasn't sure. 

The mental _screams_ of the inhabitants raked at his skin until regeneration burned him from the inside out.

* * *

 

He woke in darkness, touching cold earth with new hands. The Master knelt over him; humming thoughts skittered through his head like leaves.

“Why did you do it?” the Doctor said, testing his voice, trying to keep out of his own mind--

“Because I could.”

He closed his eyes again ( _useless_ ), and thought - bitterly - that yes, the Master would think that was a good enough reason.

* * *

 

“Doctor,” the Master said--

_sorry so sorry--_

“Doctor--”

_storm’s coming here now gone--_

“Wake _up_ \--”

\--and he’s _choking:_  no, the Master was, the Doctor’s hand clenched tight around his throat. _There are easier ways to stop me breathing_ ran through his mind, laughing and crude and exhilarated, and he released him like the contact burned.

He watched, for a time, as the Master probed his neck gingerly under dim light. "I'm sorry," the Doctor said, to no one.

* * *

 

The Doctor hadn’t lived in linear time for this long in decades: it wore on him, made him feel old and rooted, like the ancient trees Earth had. Has. Will have. _Of course_ , a voice in his head said, _humans_ cut _those trees to know them, careful hands vivisecting--_

No.

He returned to the TARDIS in silence.

* * *

 

They fought, clawing at each other, the Doctor _pushed_ to rage by an errant thought. He yelled wordlessly, rain spattering on their clothes, on their bare skin--

The Master gripped his throat as he pinned him, panting hot breath into his mouth; he tried to speak--

Lips. Shoving angrily against his, a tongue forcing its way between them--

The Doctor bit it, revelled in the metal-tasting rush of blood before the Master pulled back--

 _There are easier ways to stop me breathing_ \--

And the Doctor was grasping at him now, pulling him down again so they could rut against each other, as a prosody of giddy curses beat against his skull--

 _Yes_ , he thought viciously. _Yes_.

* * *

 

Years passed, and the Doctor still couldn’t quite bring himself to draw on that habit of knowing _when_ he was, a time-sense fed by the vortex and trained into him as a child. He used the world’s suns instead, traced their paths across the sky as he wandered far from home, let them guide him back to the TARDIS (weather-worn, low plants sprouted around her base) and the Master.

* * *

 

He took up an artist’s pencil (gathering dust in a corner of the console room) and began to draw; the TARDIS’s lights remained constant where they would normally be fading with the night.

He felt a murmur of presence, then the Master’s body pressed all along his back. Hands gripped his hips too tight; a mouth bit his shoulder. He sketched out cities, heedless, and barely felt the Master’s rhythmic strokes until he was close, too close to do anything but lay the pencil down and _shake_.

After, the Doctor watched him trace the air above the paper with a sticky hand, read the scrawled Gallifreyan notes; there was a frown on his face - deeper than it had been ten or fifteen years before.

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why do you want to rebuild it?” the Master said, incredulous.

“Because I can,” he replied.

* * *

 

In that system there was a god with two faces: one kind, and the other vengeful. It was sometimes hard to tell which was which.

He was called the Oncoming Storm, begetter of black clouds and whirlwinds, and the Destroyer of Worlds, because that was true.

Long ago, he had been named the Lonely God.

Not anymore.

**Author's Note:**

> This story contains brief choking, as well as violence that turns into violent kissing and sex.
> 
> The title is from 71 by E. E. Cummings:
> 
> stand with your lover on the ending earth--
> 
> and while a(huge which by which huger than  
> huge)whoing sea leaps to greenly hurl snow
> 
> suppose we could not love,dear;imagine
> 
> ourselves like living neither nor dead these  
> (or many thousand hearts which don't and dream  
> or many million minds which sleep and move)  
> blind sands,at pitiless the mercy of
> 
> time time time time time
> 
> \--how fortunate are you and i,whose home  
> is timelessness:we who have wandered down  
> from fragrant mountains of eternal now
> 
> to frolic in such mysteries as birth  
> and death a day(or maybe even less)
> 
> This was written from a prompt on a comment-ficathon for which I have since lost the link: if you recognise the prompt (Sophonias 1:15 Doctor/Master), let me know.


End file.
